by Dan Wolken, USA TODAY Sports

by Dan Wolken, USA TODAY Sports

There are so many ways Tennessee can claim to be one of the elite football programs in the country, from the 102,000-seat stadium that used to be filled every Saturday to the outsized budget and the national titles and the sparkling new indoor practice facility with the best bells and whistles money can buy.

Tradition always rises in college football, and the Volunteers probably will again. Just look at this year's national championship matchup between Alabama and Notre Dame, and you understand that no matter how bad things get, places like that are never more than one hire away from dominating again.

But as Tennessee stumbles its way through another coaching change, wasting time pursuing the wrong guys and getting rejected by the right ones, Dave Hart's search has become every bit the debacle its fans feared.

Hart fired Derek Dooley on Nov. 18, but the idea that Tennessee would need a new coach almost certainly occurred to him much earlier. And yet here are the Vols still without a coach after a series of rejections, the last of which came Wednesday when Charlie Strong apparently decided to stay at Louisville.

That development, reported first by Sports Illustrated, is the biggest indignity yet for a program that sees itself on a historical par with all but a handful of superpowers.

You can understand why Jon Gruden, with his cushy television job and NFL cachet, would want little to do with a high-pressure college environment where the actual coaching is only a small part of the job. You can understand why Mike Gundy, an Oklahoma State guy through and through, wouldn't leave his alma mater for a new start.

But the rejection by Strong, assuming he doesn't change his mind in the next few hours, should be a warning sign to Vol Nation. The Louisville coach just decided he'd be better off staying there than going to Tennessee.

Let that one sink in for a minute. In 1998, the year Tennessee last won a national title, Louisville was opening Papa John's Cardinal Stadium and just beginning its rise in Conference USA as a nice launching pad for coaches to go onto bigger jobs. John L. Smith won some games and eventually went to Michigan State. Bobby Petrino won even bigger and went to the NFL. Athletic director Tom Jurich hired and quickly fired Steve Kragthorpe from Tulsa before picking off Strong, a journeyman SEC assistant that nobody in that league would hire for a lead job.

Good for Strong, by the way, for parlaying seasons of 7-6, 7-6 and 10-2 (in which Louisville might actually have underachieved) into what is expected to be among the most lucrative contracts in college football. After so many years and so many rejections, there's something to be said for staying with the school that gave him his chance and getting handsomely rewarded anyway.

But the idea that Tennessee can't steal Louisville's coach is almost unthinkable. Forget the perceived differences between the ACC (where Louisville is headed in 2014) and the SEC. Forget that on Monday Strong publicly complained that Louisville didn't come close to filling its 55,000-seat stadium for Senior Day with a team that was 9-1 at the time. Strong, at his core, is an SEC guy. He coached at Florida, Texas A&M, Ole Miss and South Carolina. He knows that league. He loves that league. And given an opportunity to take what is supposed to be one of that league's best jobs, he decided to stay.

That says a lot about Louisville, but it says even more about Tennessee right now.

Hart has had a rough tenure to say the least. When he was hired 15 months ago, he walked into a department with significant financial problems and internal strife and has ruffled plenty of feathers in trying to straighten everything out. Already, Tennessee has been hit with two discrimination lawsuits based on personnel changes Hart has instituted, one of which revealed allegations that he pushed legendary women's coach Pat Summitt to retire in a manner that could be viewed as impolite.

So a messy coaching search, coming on the heels of an embarrassing 5-7 football season (1-7 in the SEC) is the last thing Hart needed. Even worse, while Tennessee has whiffed on its primary candidates, solid candidates like Sonny Dykes (Louisiana Tech to Cal), Dave Doeren (Northern Illinois to N.C. State) and Bret Bielema (Wisconsin to Arkansas) have come off the board. Others like Vanderbilt's James Franklin and Baylor's Art Briles have agreed to contract extensions.

Hart can still make a good hire. North Carolina's Larry Fedora, Miami's Al Golden, West Virginia's Dana Holgersen, Cincinnati's Butch Jones, Penn State's Bill O'Brien or Iowa State's Paul Rhoads would all be viewed as significant upgrades over Dooley and have a chance to win in Knoxville.

But the worst thing that can happen to a coaching search is for the process to get away from an athletic director while panic sets in. Tennessee moved one step closer to that on Wednesday.